


Anchor

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: Kraken - China Mieville
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28243650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: In the church beneath the church, entwined in subterranean embrace, weight of the earth to simulate weight of the water, the new Teuthex was speaking.
Relationships: Billy Harrow/Dane Parnell
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Anchor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



In the church beneath the church, entwined in subterranean embrace, weight of the earth to simulate weight of the water, the new Teuthex was speaking.

“Reach out to enfold us. We, the prey beneath your beak and the ripple beneath your arms; your stillness and your strike in the cold and unending. Kraken, we implore you.”

It was not a large congregation, nor was he much of a public speaker. There was perhaps too much of the old crusade left in him, the war which he had won but not escaped from. It stuck like water to a beached sea creature; dripped from him as he preached. He was not a captivating speaker. But the faithful followed with word-perfect scripture, and Billy followed with his gaze alone.

He couldn’t help but notice that Dane glanced over at him more than the rest. Not for long, and never with worry, or plea for reassurance. He preached to his diminished (but fervent; had they not gone to die for their god?) audience, but occasionally he looked over their heads, over the rows and rows of empty pews and to the back of the room where Billy sat.

 _You’ll get there,_ Billy thought, and gave an illicit, faintly blasphemous thumbs up. He wasn’t close enough, and the light was too dim to read any minute change in Dane’s expression, but he liked to think there’d been a smile. _You don’t have to be the same as the last Teuthex, and you know that. You’re you. They all know what you did for god Kraken._

He still felt like an outsider. As he should; he was present to spectate, not to follow the holy words in their incomprehensible linguistic slurry, the English-Latin-Hebrew-Greek-who-knew-what mix that formed the church’s texts. He was not one of the faithful, though he hadn’t yet missed a sermon. He would not leave his back row pew, though he was invited, with reverence, to sit front and centre.

“Go out,” Dane said. “Be as strong as you can, and don’t blame yourselves for the strength you don’t have yet. We’re all of us like the godlings, god’s young, the small fry, yeah? We know our limits. We grow. Our reach will grow, and we ain’t getting back to what we was before, but we’ll be something else magnificent. Kraken gave us time. Use it.”

The sermon was ended. The congregation rose, few as they were, and started to file out. Each paused for a quiet word, or to clasp one of Dane’s large shoulders before leaving. There was a sense of calm in them. A satisfaction. A sated internal hunger.

They nodded at Billy as they passed him. The woman with the squidlike siphon, the man with multiple _Architeuthis_ eyes, the woman with the beak, the man with the suckers on his forearms. Changed, but survived. They saluted their bottle prophet as they filed from church. He’d yet to work out what to do in response, but they didn’t seem to mind.

Almost alone in the chapel’s dim lights, Billy finally stood. He stretched the pew’s hardwood strain from his back and made his way to the front. It took longer than it seemed like it should; the room was cavernous, the shadows stretching into pools he waded through to reach Dane at the altar. Dust motes drifting. Dead skin and trapped memory. Good and terrible things had happened in this room. The carvings on the walls remembered. So did Billy.

“I liked that one,” he said. “Can’t help but notice you’re trending towards the hopeful. It’s nice.”

Dane glanced up from the altar, skimming his sermon notes with the first sign of self-doubt he’d shown all day. His eyes were the colour of oil slick. Inky. “Yeah. It might be too soon, or it might not; no idea what Teuthex would’ve done, so. We have to start healing sometime.”

“And wallowing won’t bring in new acolytes.”

This time, Dane smiled. All the shadows in the chapel couldn’t hide it. “Oh, you’re bad, you are. Talk like that around the others, see where it gets you.”

“It’s fine,” Billy said cheerfully. “The Teuthex will vouch for me.”

“Don’t push it.”

“ _Mea culpa, mea culpa,_ etcetera. Want me to proofread next week’s speech, or are you not done with that one yet?”

“Haven’t started,” Dane said. He looked briefly guilty, shuffling his speech notes in the way of a man who had never much had to give speeches. “Never thought the apocalypse would end up so damn busy. All those meetings with the sea’s people, giving thanks, making friends. We’ll need their protection for a bit. Just until we’re ready to stand on our own two-”

“Tentacles?”

“Two’s about all we have left,” Dane agreed, laughed, then stopped with a guilty look down at the altar. Sealed up, the hatch closed, god’s holy mouthparts storing deadly sacrament in the dark.

Though not quite as deadly as expected; Kraken, it seemed, had occasional mercy. Once in a blue moon, a king tide, an apocalypse. It had mercy, and it had not killed Dane. That knowledge was the closest Billy ever came to feeling worshipful. His gratitude took on an edge of devotion, a moment in which he did not spectate through glass, from the safety of the backmost pew. An enormity that overwhelmed him; drowned him with the pressure-horror of what had _almost_ been, what he might have lost, what miracle had been granted. He felt it, though he would not admit it.

The squid god had given him Dane back. Silently, Billy gave thanks.

“I’m still getting those dreams I told you about,” Dane said abruptly. He drummed his fingers on his papers and the altar beneath. His eyes…His eyes had taken some getting used to. They rejected all light. At times they seemed to be looking not at this world, but somewhere much darker. Somewhere many hundreds of fathoms below. Carefully, Billy touched his arm.

“Any clearer?” he asked.

Dane covered Billy’s hand with one of his own; his skin was colder than it used to be. These days he was always a little colder than flesh. “Nah. It’s weird still. All these flashes, patterns, words. Images. Lot of ink. Some fragments I recognise from our library, though I never read even a fraction of it. Too jumbled, but I get the sense I could maybe start to untangle it. Could do something with it, maybe. Not sure if it’s there because of what Grisamentum almost done to me, or because of these.” He gestured at his face, his eyes. The distance in them would have been unnerving, but he kept a hand on Billy’s, squeezing. Whatever new force was unfurling inside of him, he would not let himself be lost to it.

“Could be something big, in the end,” Dane said. Billy nodded. He’d known when Dane had first started talking about the dreams, disjointed though his descriptions were. It wasn’t a premonition, because he wasn’t really a prophet- except in the sense that he was. He knew it was something big. He could see it in the void of Dane’s eyes, the deep-sea trench where his soul now swam.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think it will be. When you work things out.”

“Could be what we need to rebuild.”

“I expect that’s why it was given to you.”

“I ain’t mentioned it to anyone else,” Dane said with awkward sharpness, squeezing Billy’s hand again. “I will at some point, but not yet. Let’s just keep it between the two of us, yeah? I’m deep in uncharted waters here, and you’re the anchor keeping me at a level I can handle. Assuming you don’t mind, of course-”

“Dane,” Billy said. “God, Dane, really? After what we’ve been through? Come on. You know I’d do anything for you. Come on. You want an anchor, I’m it. I’m…” He wasn’t sure what he was, or whether he would ever find the words to express it. Uncharted waters, for him and Dane both. Who else could say they’d found each other at the apocalypse, and kept each other after?

“Yeah,” Dane said. “I know. Same for me. And whatever’s going on with the ink dreams, the things I’m seeing- I’m glad you’re with me for it. We’ll make sense of it all. You and me, we’ve changed the world before.”

His eyes were still pits without end, but his smile was as beautiful as ever. He took his hand off Billy’s, opened his arms; invitation. Billy went without a second thought. Dane’s skin was cold, chilled like a thing that had never seen sun, and Billy pressed his own warmth up against it. His hands found Dane’s spine, he breathed out heat on Dane’s neck. Felt Dane laugh-

“D’you mind? That tickles.”

And didn’t mind it in the slightest.

 _Kraken embrace me,_ he thought, knowing the words weren’t quite scripture, knowing they could become so if Dane wanted it. He exhaled them onto Dane’s neck, and again against his mouth, into the clumsy, over-eager, overdue kiss they found their way to. The edge of the altar dug into his hip. It was not quite as cold as Dane’s lips. _Kraken keep me close. Let’s swim this sea together._

Inside the darkness of the altar, something stirred behind glass.

**Author's Note:**

> I like your ideas for the ending much better than the actual ending! Thank you for your wonderful prompts.


End file.
